Adams and Jefferson, 22 June at Boston Public Library

Adams and Jefferson, 22 June at Boston Public Library
                                       Marcus McCorison

Good morning. Before turning to our morning session, I state my personal thanks to Robert
Baron and his staff at Fulcrum Books for initiating this event, as well as to the staff members of
the Boston Public Library and the Massachusetts Historical Society for their work in organizing
so a grand event. Also, my gratitude goes to Jeremy Dibble of the Massachusetts Historical
Society library for his eager help to me in helping me prepare for this session. In addition, at
Monticello Jack Robinson, Foundation Librarian, and Endrina Tay of his staff were gracious
hosts and very helpful to me. So too was Gail Pond, Collections Manager at Poplar Forest, who
guided me through that delightful place and exposed to me materials on Jefferson’s library in
retreat.
         Our session in entitled, “Adams and Jefferson as Book Collectors.”The venue for our
cogitations is entirely appropriate to our subject because our hosts this morning hold the bulk of
the library of John Adams, deposited here many years ago by the City of Quincy, once the north
precinct of the Town of Braintree.
         Our speakers have developed a good deal of information about the libraries of these two,
dare I say, bibliomaniacs, as you learned when reading their papers posted on the conference
web site. Each emphasizes Adams’ and Jefferson’s life long drive for learning. Both men found
within their libraries the sources of deep knowledge and, ultimately, wisdom that enriched their
own lives and that played such pivotal rôles in the forming the foundation of our nation. But,
these two brilliant men could have hardly been different.
         Adams – short and stout, marked by Calvinistic personal questioning, plain of manners
and outspoken and always vividly present – a pragmatist who was shaped by physical labor on a
small farm, and who was intellectually circumscribed by the preoccupation with his profession
and his personality.
         Jefferson – tall and handsome, elegant of manners and fully assured of himself and his
place in life, although when in public, vivid but not always present – a romantic who was shaped
by a culture that depended upon the labor of others, and who was intellectually adventurous with
interests that all but outran his possibilities.
         Our presenters demonstrate these opposites as expressed in the manner by which they
built and used their libraries.

                                       Elizabeth Prindle

Beth is the Manager of the John Adams Library Project at the Boston Public Library. As such
she was co-curator (with Earle Havens) of the Library’s 2006-2007, award winning exhibition,
“John Adams Unbound,” that brilliantly exposed the contents of Adams’ library and not
insignificant segments of his mind. In 2005 Beth was curator of another excellent exhibition that
illuminated the events of the Boston Massacre and the subsequent trials of the English soldiers
who were defended by Adams. And, she has been of great assistance to me. An alumna of
Stanford University and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Beth has been a teacher, an
officer of Boston’s South End Historical Society, and serves on the administrative committee of

MHS’s Adams Papers.
        The title of Beth’s paper is “Thought, care, and money: John Adams assembles his
library.” She depicts John Adams, a man of modest means but ambitious of spirit and energy,
self-questioning in the Calvinist tradition of New England Congregationalism, striving to
succeed in his profession. His library of some three thousand volumes (number of titles?), chiefly
professional in nature, reflects that underlying personality and mind.

                                        David Emblidge

Formerly the director of his own publishing house, David Embidge has been an editor at the
Harvard University and Cambridge University Presses. DaCapo Press published his edition of
“My Day”: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Acclaimed [newspaper] Columns and Oxford issued his
Appalachian Trail Reader. He is, as well, an essayist and reviewer for The New Republic and
The New York Times. I, having suffered to no avail through dreaded grade school exercises,
would most like to read his article, “The Palmer Method and the Tenor of our Times.” Having
devolved into academia, he is now Associate Professor at Emerson College in its Department of
Writing, Literature, and Publishing. David has held a Fulbright professorship in France and a
fellowship at the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello.
        “Bibliomany has possessed me: Thomas Jefferson the booksellers’ customer
extraordinaire” is the title of his paper which depicts Thomas Jefferson as a man of confidence,
engendered by priviledge, possessing unbounded curiosity, governed my a mind that required
discipline that found expression in catalogues and lists, yet one unable to restrain impulses that
resulted in uncompleted dwellings and libraries. David’s survey of his first libraries and that of
the nascent University of Virginia demonstrates those conflicting energies.

                                         Kevin J. Hayes

Professor Hayes holds a chair in the English Department of the University of Central Oklahoma
where his offerings extend from colonial and 19th century American literature and English
literature, to New Wave cinema, and to bibliography and research methods. A graduate of the
University of Toledo, his Ph.D. was achieved at the feet of J. A. Leo Lemay, that late and
lamented autocrat at the University of Delaware. An active scholar and writer, Kevin is author or
editor of a number of books, for which he has received several awards. Those most germane to
our doings this morning include massive works on the libraries of William Byrd II of Westover
(Madison House, 1997), and (with Edwin Wolf II of Benjamin Franklin (APS and Library Co.
Phila., 2006), as well as his Road to Monticello, the life and mind of Thomas Jefferson (Oxford,
2008).
         Kevin’s subject is “Jefferson’s vacation library.” Located at Poplar Forest, it was some
90 miles from Monticello; in those days a three day trip. There, Jefferson was not a man entirely
at rest, but one who actively supervised a tract of 4,000 acres, manned by thirty slaves. He lived
in an unfinished house, surrounded by grandchildren and workmen who were building a dwelling
house that embodied Jefferson’s mature ideas of life, expressed in architecture. His library at

Poplar Forest, also, was an encapsulation of his ideals. But, like nearly all of his possessions, it
was dispersed by sale and lost, although some 600 titles have been identified.

I have a question to put to each of our speakers. That is, what is your opinion of the bibliophilic
interests of Adams and Jefferson in the quality of the printing, illustrations, bindings of the books
they collected? Zoltan Harasty, William Peden, Millicent Sowerby, and Hannah French deal
with some aspects of this aspect of their subject’s book collecting and we know that Jefferson
was particular about the quality of the translations of the classics, but I would be happy to learn
of your views on this topic.

MAMcC NOTES

                        Adams and Jefferson as Connoisseurs of the Book

                                         Beth Prindle
                 “Thought, care, and money, John Adams assembles his library”

As in all things a pragmatist, Prindle writes, “He did not collect with a collector’s eye.” —
“Book collecting–from first to last–was John Adams pathway, not his destination.” But he was
ever quesitioning.

JA to Isaac Smith in London, 1771
        I want to agree with some Bookseller, of character, in whom I could entirely confide, to
send me Books whenever I shall want them, as long as I shall live. As I am a little inclined to be
extravagant, in that kind of Entertainment, it is very likely I may write for books to the amount of
twenty, perhaps thirty, Pounds sterling a year.

In Paris his bookseller was Charles François Hochereau from whom Adams bought books on
modern philosophy, e.g., the enlightenment idealists – Rousseau &c. with whom he had
fundamental disagreement, and on the political science, on which he built his profound
knowledge of theories of government.

                                     David Embidge
 “Bibliography has possessed me: Thomas Jefferson the booksellers’ customer extraordiniare”

Describes Jefferson as a book collector, a book user, a dilettante, an aficianado, a connoisseur of
books, maps, and engravings.

Jefferson’s search for order — organization of his library on Baconian principles:
        Memory, Reason, Imagination, catalogue gives author, title, number of volumes & size
Booksellers –
        Paris — Froullé; Reibelt (& Baltimore and New Orleans); duFief (& Philadelphia);
        Amsterdam — Van Damme and DuFour
        London — John Stockdale and James Lackington
        Georgetown — Joseph Milligan
        Boston — Cummings, Hilliard & Co., for library of UVa.

Bought his sets of books in sheets, had them bound, often shelved them by subject rather than as
       sets
Ordered bindings of conflated texts, e.g. Cicero with latin and greek texts together
Careful in obtaining best translations, e.g., Sales; Schultz for the classics

Examples of purchases –
       Milton’s Works (London, 1753) — [Sowerby 4917] gilt (v.5, 4917)
       deBry — [Sowerby 3973-83] The Great or American Voyages (Frankfort, 1590-1619)
              11 parts in 3 vols.
              Arrowsmith’s — [Sowerby 3846] Map exhibiting all the new discoveries in the
              interior parts of North America (London 1802). TJ notices US edition but if
              available wants the English edn. as being better engraved than US edn.
       Palladio — [Sowerby 4174] TJ binds up English, French, and Italian versions in 2 vols.
              each vol. containing the 3 languages.
       Pallas — [Sowerby 4737], Vocabulaires, published by Catherine the Great in Russian,
              200 copies. TJ receives by request a copy a gift of a Russian count
Bacon, Locke, Newton his most revered authors other than the classics
       Newton’ — [Sowerby 3721] The mathematical principles of natural philosophy (London,
              1803) 3 vols.

                                          Kevin Hayes
                          “Jefferson’s Vacation Library” (Poplar Forest)

Duplicate titles from Monticello at Poplar Forest

Grand daughters pasting numbers (shelf marks) on spines of TJ’s books

3 mahogany library book cases
Examples of purchases –
      Many large sets in small formats
              Classics in editions by Elzevir and Aldine
              Greek historians publ. by Tauchniz in Leipzig
              Set fof 98 vols. classics, varying edns. — Pindar printed on satin
              109 vols. Bell’s British poets
              35 vols. French authors in a London, 1784 edn.
      Letters of the British spy, Baltimore, 18mo, gilt, used as example for binding his Manual
              of Parliamentary Practice
      Buffon, Histoire naturelle in 52 vols.
      Dobson’s Encyclopedia in 18 vols. qrto
      de Herruera, Historica generale in vellum

                                      \Zoltan Haraszti
                             John Adams & the prophets of progress
                                  Harvard Univ. Press, 1952.

A critique of Adams’ social and political philosophy using his library to explicate it.

Wm. H. Peden, “Thomas Jefferson, book-collector”
                                PHD disseration, UVa, 1942

Chapter VI, Thos. Jefferson, Librarian and bibliophile

Jefferson’s search for order — organization of his library on Baconian principles:
        Memory, Reason, Imagination, catalogue gives author, title, number of volumes & size
Care — wrapt and sewed up his volumes of ancient laws and newspapers in oil cloth, “so that
        neither air nor moisture can have access to them.”

Collection of American laws for his study of same. En bloc purchases, Peyton Randolph and Col.
       Richard Bland being important.

Philology — American Indian vocabularies, constructed of 30 years, stolen and lost in move
       from Washington to Monticello
       Anglo-Saxon – fascination with ancient Briton as source of liberty, ruined by kings and
             priests — view of society in accord with J-J Rousseau

Tacitus and Horace as pure use of language

Collections of literature relatively small. Sterne a favorite, with Sentimental journey through
France and Italy (London, 1770) — [Sower4335] by being a favorite.

Poems of Ossian by James Macpherson — [Sowerby 4377] TJ requested a cousin of “editor” in
      England to find Ossian’s poems in the original Gaelic written in a fair round hand, to
      spare no expense and if found would have them bound in vellum with edges gilt. Unable
      to produce same. TJ never accepted them as contemporary productions.

Neat books — booksellers Robert Aitken (excellent bookbinder) and Robert Bell in Phila.

On book bindings — “Our American bookings are faulty in execution as well as materials. They
      are so spongy that when once a book has been opened, it will never close again. A book
      well bound is as heavy as a piece of lead.”

  Edwin Wolf II, “Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826,” in Gazette of the Grolier Club, n.s. 16, June
                                      1971, pp.55-59.

Exhibit lot 116. Christoph Daniel Ebeling, Erdbeschreibung und Geschicte von Amerika.
       Hamburg: 1816. Presentation from Ebeling to TJ who had it neatly bound in half red,
       roan over marbled boards.

                                        Hannah D. French

“Thomas Jefferson’s last bookbinder,
     Frederick August Mayo,” in Bookbinding in Early America, AAS, 1986, pp.148-220.

Detailed account of correspondence between TJ and Mayo, 1818-1825.

                                     Gilreath and Wilson
           Thomas Jefferson’s library. Library of Congress, 1989. Illustration on p. x

Seneca Philosoph (Biponti Soc., 1782) and Oeuvres (Paris, 1795) — [Sowerby 1324] TJ
       conflated two eds. into 10 vols. in straight grain read morocco, gilt, labels.

Tacitus, Opera and Works (Amsterdam, 1672 and London, 1737)— [Sowerby 80] TJ conflated
       the latin and English eds. into 9 vols., tree and marbled calf, gilt spines

Analyse raisonné [of cults and religion] by D. de Tracy (Paris, 1804) — [Sowerby 1296]
       author’s presentation copy, TJ had it bound in tree calf, gilt.